Study: Personal loans increasingly going toward medical expenses

April 13, 2021

Todd Shryock, contributing author

Logan Lutton

Even with non-COVID care being avoided, patients are still having trouble making ends meet.

A study done by LendingTree that analyzed personal loans showed that an increasing number of patients were using the money to pay medical expenses at a greater rate than prior to the pandemic.

Here are some of the key findings:

The percentage of personal loan inquiries that were for medical expenses rose 50% in the last full week of 2020 compared to the equivalent week in 2019.

The pandemic has caused many Americans to forgo non-COVID-19 care — especially those who rely on loans and credit cards to make ends meet. According to U.S. Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey data, 56.5% more Americans who rely on debt to make ends meet skipped non-COVID-19 care than those using the same income sources to meet spending needs as before the crisis.

Some states were impacted more strongly than others when it came to forgoing non-COVID-19 medical care. For example, even though those across the U.S. who skipped medical care were 56.5% more likely to rely on debt than those with their usual income, that figure jumped to 107.5% in Rhode Island, 106.6% in North Dakota and 95.2% in Oklahoma.

At least 5% of personal loan inquiries were for medical expenses in 10 of the last 11 full weeks of 2020. Americans who skipped non-COVID-19 medical care were 56.5% more likely to rely on debt to make ends meet than to have the same income sources as before the pandemic.

Notably, the proportion of personal loan inquiries for medical expenses at the start of March 2019 was 3.6%, which was the same value at the end of the year. This static is opposite the trend in 2020, when such inquiries finished the year on a high.